How Strength Training (Not Cardio) Suppresses Appetite and Burns Fat | Ep 431
Struggling with hunger during your cut?
Try Calocurb for natural appetite support that activates GLP-1 to help you feel satisfied. Clinical studies showed a 40% reduction in cravings and 30% reduction in hunger within one hour. Get 10% off at witsandweights.com/calocurb
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Hungry after every workout and stuck in an endless “eat less, move more” loop?
Strength training is actually one of the most powerful appetite control tools you have, but most people only think of it as a muscle-building tool.
Learn the science behind why lifting suppresses hunger hormones like ghrelin while boosting satiety signals like GLP-1 and PYY. We cover why cardio often backfires through energy compensation, leaving you hungrier and more fatigued without the fat loss results. And discover the behavioral shifts that make strength training superior for long-term body recomposition.
Plus, get a template for building an appetite-friendly training week, cardio structured to avoid spiking your hunger, and a specific post-workout timing strategy to eliminate overeating at your hardest meal of the day.
Timestamps
0:00 – Strength training for appetite control
3:38 – How cardio triggers energy compensation and stalls fat loss
7:42 – The gut hormone shifts that suppress hunger after lifting
12:31 – How protein cravings and reward substitution change your eating
16:27 – Building a training week that supports fat loss and controls appetite
20:12 – How to adjust cardio to lose fat without spiking hunger
23:47 – 3 myths keeping you stuck (cardio, calories, and willpower)
27:12 – Bonus: post-workout timing trick to stop overeating at dinner
Most people assume fat loss comes from burning more calories through long cardio, yet the missing piece is appetite. What you do in the gym changes your hunger signals, your food choices, and your ability to stick to a deficit without losing muscle or sanity. Strength training often suppresses hunger after hard sets, while cardio tends to trigger compensation: you eat more, move less, and feel “earned” calories tug at you. This difference matters more than the treadmill display’s estimate. When your workouts help you feel satisfied on smaller portions and keep non‑exercise movement steady, the deficit finally holds, and results show up without white‑knuckling every meal.
Under the hood, appetite is a symphony of hormones and signals. Lifting hard turns up sympathetic activity and floods the system with metabolites like lactate, which blunts ghrelin while nudging PYY and GLP‑1 upward for a temporary, yet powerful, appetite dip. That window can last one to two hours for many lifters and is long enough to strategically place the meal you usually overeat. Contrast that with moderate, longer cardio sessions that leave you depleted and reward‑seeking. You might consciously justify extra food or subconsciously move less the rest of the day, shrinking your true deficit. The science increasingly treats resistance training and endurance work as different tools for appetite management, not just calorie math.
Behavior and identity layer on top of biology. Many of us use food as relief after stress, which is normal but unhelpful when goals demand consistency. Strength training offers “reward substitution”: chasing PRs, tracking progress, and feeling capable becomes a new source of satisfaction. That shift nudges food choices in line with your identity as a lifter. Protein goes up to support recovery, which further increases satiety and protects lean mass. Instead of punishing yourself with “eat less, move more,” you fuel training, maintain muscle, and run a purposeful deficit to reveal it. When setbacks happen, the gym pulls you back on track because progress is tangible and motivating.
To harness these effects, structure an appetite‑friendly week around three to four lifting sessions focused on compounds—squats, deadlifts, presses, rows, pull‑ups—with moderate volume. Aim for roughly 10 to 15 hard sets per muscle group per week, near failure, while managing recovery so fatigue doesn’t drive hunger. Add isolation work as needed for joints and aesthetics, but keep sessions efficient. Walk daily to elevate low‑grade movement without spiking appetite. Include limited cardio if you enjoy it, prioritizing short, easy sessions two to three times a week, 20 to 30 minutes, at conversational pace. Keep sprints minimal and strategic if desired; they rarely worsen hunger.
Finally, use timing as a lever. Train before the meal that tends to spiral—often dinner—so the post‑workout suppression window helps you feel full on less. If afternoon snacking is the trap, schedule training to bridge that gap. Fuel cardio deliberately with protein and carbs if it otherwise makes you ravenous, and avoid long, moderate sessions that trigger compensation. Remember, willpower is the smallest slice of appetite control. Hormones, sleep, stress, training intensity, protein, and meal timing do the heavy lifting. When you align these inputs, hunger stops fighting you, adherence climbs, and fat loss becomes the by‑product of a system designed to work with your biology, not against it.
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Philip Pape: 0:01
How does lifting weights connect with hunger? Today I'm going to show you three mechanisms that make your strength training a powerful appetite control tool, not just a muscle building tool. You'll learn why hard lifting sessions tend to suppress hunger hormones often for hours, how your training changes your food choices without the need for willpower, and a strategic little trick that uses your post-workout appetite window to eliminate overeating at your toughest meal. Most people don't realize that their training is already doing half the work for them when it comes to hunger. They just need to understand how to use it. I'm your host, Philip Pate, and today we're gonna talk about lifting weights versus cardio versus hunger. Most people think that cardio is a fat loss tool, and lifting is for building muscle. Or even if they understand that diet controls fat loss, they think that cardio is a way to, you know, ramp up your metabolism, burn more calories. And I get it, right? You burn more calories during, say, a 45-minute run than a 45-minute lifting session, but it's not just about math. And honestly, those differences aren't very meaningful because I think the math is incomplete. Fat loss isn't just about calories burned during exercise. In fact, it's not at all. It's about what happens to your appetite, your meat, your food choices, your ability to stick to a deficit for weeks and sometimes months without losing your mind, because we have to stick to it, but also not losing your muscle. And when you look at those variables, strength training comes out ahead by a wide margin. And you're like, why am I talking about this? This is weird. This is episode seven of our eight-part appetite series for January, because appetite and hunger is a huge part of this. And I wanted to cover the mechanism that brings this together in terms of how your training, how your workouts actually shape your hunger and your cravings and your body composition results, bring it all together. We've been talking a lot about, you know, food and sleep and stress and hormones, but today it's really more about how training connects with that. And then stick around to the end because I'm gonna give you a really cool uh trick, if you will, a hack, a tool, protocol related to pre-workout meal timing and post-exercise appetite suppression to reduce overeating. A lot of you guys have a problem with overeating, and we can actually take advantage of our hunger signals related to training to offset that and potentially save you tens, if not hundreds, of calories without changing anything else. Hey, this is Philip, and today's episode is sponsored by Calocurb. If you've ever been in a fat loss phase and felt like hunger was working against you, CallowCurb's GLP1 activator is a game changer. CallowCurb is a natural appetite support made from a marisate, a patented bitter hops extract that activates GLP1 and other gut signals to help you feel fuller, faster. Clinical studies showed a 40% reduction in cravings and a 30% reduction in hunger within one hour. If you want to try it, go to witsandweights.com slash calocurb for 10% off your first order. The link is in the show notes. That's witsandweights.com slash callocurb. All right, let's start with why the cardio for burning calories or fat loss approach is a problem, why it backfires, even when it might look impressive on paper, and how that connects to hunger as well. Because it's not just about compensation, it's also about hunger. We're gonna address those topics. So when researchers study exercise and fat loss, you know, they tend to see something that we've talked about more and more lately called energy compensation. And in fact, the not extreme of this, but one of the best examples of this research is Herman Ponser's research on how our metabolisms are pretty steady from the age of 20 to 60, at least our BMR, and that doing more exercise doesn't necessarily burn as many calories as you think. It doesn't mean you shouldn't do exercise or train or move. It's a comp compensatory effect, and it depends on the type, the modality, and the quantity, right? And this is the tendency that for your body to offset the calories that you burn through exercise by either eating more or moving less the rest of the day. There are some compensatory mechanisms at the cellular level as well in terms of your metabolism, but a lot of this is other things like just you're compensating by eating and the types of food you eat and you're moving less, et cetera. And so cardio tends to trigger more compensation than strength training. That's the important takeaway today. There's a systematic review on training or exercise and energy intake in adults with overweight and obesity that found that exercise can improve appetite regulation, but the degree of compensation varies dramatically based on the type of exercise, the duration, and individual factors. So that's what I'm talking about. Now, what does this mean practically? Well, let's say you do a long cardio session, let's say you do 45 minutes or an hour of, you know, moderate intensity, right? On the bike or treadmill, pretty common type of uh exercises. And maybe you burn 400 calories and you may not have, to be honest. You know, that's what the machine says. Um, and now you're pretty tired, you're pretty wiped, you feel kind of depleted. And what happens afterward is your body compensates in a couple ways. First, the, you know, I earn this and I'm gonna earn it back type of eating. Now, this is both conscious and subconscious, you know, because after cardio, you may feel justified in eating more at a psychological level, right? But it's also real in that the body is craving these things, right? So then you have a smoothie right after you go for that run, or you have a larger dinner, and you may not even notice it, right? It depends on how how much control or structure you have over your meals to kind of offset that. But this happens a lot more after cardio than after lifting, for sure. Secondly, your neat tends to drop neat is non-exercise activity thermogenesis, all the movement you do outside the gym, right? Walking, fidgeting, taking the stairs, standing while you work, chores, all that. And after you have a cardio session that's a bit exhausting, especially if it's longer, people unconsciously move less the rest of the day. They sit more, they skip taking the stairs, they're wiped out, they make little excuses or rationales in their brain continuously every time there's a decision point. And again, a lot of it's unconscious. So it's not like, you know, don't blame yourself for this. A lot of this is unconscious. So then if you truly did burn 400 calories during that exercise bout, you know, maybe you eat half of it back, 200. Maybe, maybe you have another 100 or 150 of calories you don't burn later because you're not moving. And so your net, you know, if you're in a if you're in a fat loss phase, your net deficit just got smaller, right? Because your metabolism is essentially lower while while your intake is higher, right? So again, even if you control for the intake intentionally, you might feel hungrier and you still might have a slightly lower metabolism than you thought, if that makes sense. Now compare this to strength training, where the session itself might burn a fewer, a little bit fewer calories, let's say 200 to 300, it's still more than you might think. But the compensation pattern's different because lifters often experience temporary appetite suppression after training. And they're not as likely to feel depleted in that reward-seeking way. And then because the fatigue is more localized, right? Maybe your legs are tired from your squats, maybe your overall energy is still decent, but you're not totally wiped like you would from a cardio session, then your neat tends to stay more stable because you still, your body kind of feels like, you know what, I have there's still more things I can do. I still have some energy, you know, I haven't gone for my walk yet, which is different than my lifting session. So there's like, again, psychologically and physiologically, a little bit of a difference there. And there's research to back this up. A 2024 review specifically examined resistance training and appetite-related variables because researchers they noticed that the lifting produces different appetite outcomes than endurance work. And I think the research world is starting to treat lifting and cardio as different, you know, tools for appetite, not just calorie burning, and also for body composition and trying to look at what causes what. Now, I'm not trying to trash cardio at all. Trust me, there's lots of forms of cardio from walking to sprinting that I'm a big fan of. And cardio definitely can be a big tool. It also is not going to reduce your metabolism just because you're doing cardio. It's again the matter of the type and the quantity. And I think the compensation piece is only part of the story. So now, what is happening in your gut hormones after you lift? Okay, now we're bringing back to some of the stuff you learned on the previous episodes in this series. If you haven't heard those, go back in our January episodes and look for the different ones about your gut hormones. So let's get into the mechanism. So this is this is post-exercise appetite suppression. So, what does strength training do that cardio doesn't? A 2023 review on acute exercise and appetite control showed that moderate to vigorous exercise often produces transient, right? That's temporary appetite suppression. And these are the your gut hormones. Acylated ghrelin, ghrelin goes down, that's your hunger hormone. PYY and GLP1 goes up, those are your satiety signals that help you feel full. And a 2024 update review confirmed that exercise-induced appetite suppression exists, and ghrelin is the consistent variable here in terms of the hormones. Now, this is temporary. It doesn't mean that you're going to eat less forever, right? But the window helps us because we can use that strategically, right? We're going to get into that. We can use that window strategically. So, what makes strength training potentially superior here? Well, it comes down to intensity and metabolic byproducts. So higher intensity work, and that means, you know, hard sets of strength training, higher loads, basically just lifting hard and heavy, and heavy doesn't have to be low rep, just getting close to failure and doing it the way you're supposed to do anyway, to build muscle, it produces these metabolites in your bloodstream. You're accumulate lactate, hydrogen ions, other byproducts of working hard and fatiguing those muscles. And then this creates a sympathetic nervous system activation, right? Your CNS, your central nervous system gets activated, the fight or flight response, all of that. And when you're in that state, your appetite gets suppressed. Your body is focused on performing and recovering as opposed to digesting and eating. Because you might have heard fight or flight versus rest and digest. Well, you're not in the rest and digest. So ironically, as much as we sometimes call this a bad thing, it's it's an acute, it's a hormetic response, a stress response from lifting weights that will suppress appetite. And that's why post-lifting, lacking having no hunger or having a lack of hunger is very, very common. Where you finish a hard session of, you know, lower body work, but upper body, I don't care. A hard session. And oftentimes the last thing you want is a big meal. You might want like a protein shake, you might want some water, you might want a little bit of carbs or something right after, but it you don't have that like I have to devour everything in sight feeling that you do often get after a cardio session. It's it's usually absent. Again, this is these are generalities based on populations, based on studies, based on general observations all coming together. It may not be you, but this is generally something we could take advantage of. Another paper from 2024 made a really cool observation that acute exercise, okay. I'm just using the words from the study, acute just means in the moment, a small amount of it, right? Like an exercise session, can elevate um appetite perceptions, meaning you might perceive yourself as hungry in some ways and yet not translate into increased energy intake because your gut hormones are powerful enough to override the subjective feeling. So that's an interesting one. And then there's something a lot of people don't realize too, that strength training, because it supports having higher protein intake, right? You're in other words, you tend to do both. You train and then you also eat more protein. And we know higher protein is one of the best satiety tools. It keeps you really full. When you lift, you naturally want to eat more protein because you want to recover, you want to support your muscle building. It just all supports each other, you know? And again, you could definitely eat more protein without lifting more if you do it intentionally, but these tend to be corollary things that happen, okay? And and all of these make the hunger management and food priorities easier, like less friction, you know, with less friction. All right. Now remember, I promised you a specific timing trick at the end to use this knowledge, to use this post-workout appetite suppression. We want to eliminate overeating, and we're gonna build with that, build toward that. So definitely I want you to stick around. Before we do, I want to tell you about today's sponsor, Calo Curb. That's C-A-L-O-C-U-R-B. We've been talking about how strength training naturally suppresses appetite by shifting your gut hormones, especially GOP1. Well, Callow Curb works through the same pathway but a different mechanism. It's a 100% natural supplement, and it has something called a marisate, which is a patented hops extract developed over a bunch of research by the New Zealand government, okay, not by a private company. It's actually funded by New Zealand and it activates your body's natural gut brain axis. So your satiety signals, so you feel faster or you feel full faster. So if you take this at least an hour before you eat, and I've been taking it myself now that I'm in a fat loss phase, aside from occasionally a little hops burps, I'm sorry about that. I know it's gross, it does cause you to eat less. So if you're trying to, if you, you know, have a plate of dinner and you would normally eat the whole plate, you may end up eating two-thirds of it or half of it. And the studies show that. Clinical studies reduce show to reduce cravings by 40%, hunger by 30%, calorie intake by 18%. You have to wait at least an hour after taking the capsule. So put a reminder in your phone, take it like an hour or two before dinner or lunch. And what I appreciate about appreciate about Calicurb, you know, it's not, it doesn't purport to do more than it does. It's actually pretty simple ingredients. It's a hops and it triggers a hormone that makes you a little bit more full. That's it. It's and it's your own hormone. So it's upregulating your hormones, it's not replacing that with a synthetic, for example. So it kind of falls in between, you know, using nothing or just food and the GLP1 medications. It's kind of in between those. It's a great tool that works alongside lifting weights, hitting your protein, managing your training nutrition, eating your fiber, and timing your meals. And it can be an additional lever for those times when appetite is working against you, which is often, I'm raising my hand now, during a fat loss phase or mini-cut where your calories are cut down. So, ladies, if you're down in that 140, 13, 1200, 1100 calorie range, men down at 18, 17, 16, 1500 range, that's when things get a little bit hairy. And this could be an extra tool in the toolbox. You don't need a prescription. It's just a single little capsule. You can go on and off, use it whenever you want. If you want to try it, go to witsandweights.com slash callocurb. The link should auto-apply my code Wits and Weights for 10% off. That's witsandweights.com slash calocurb. Link is also in the show notes. And now I want to get back to the training appetite connection, right? We've covered the hormonal and physiological side. Now let's talk about the behavioral and psychological stuff because many people use food as reward, right? After a hard day, after stressful meeting, after putting the kids to bed, after you know, dealing with a tough boss, whatever. Food often is the thing that makes you feel better. And that's emotional eating, stress eating, reward eating. We've all been there. You might be struggling with that right now. Maybe it's something you've dealt with in the past and have sort of put tools in place to move past it. And you know, we don't always 100% get away from it. It's always going to be there in our heads. We're human beings. We have parts of our brain that crave energy in that way. Strength training can become a reward instead. So I love this. I love pivoting so that we can swap one reward with another and satisfy that itch and satisfy that emotional need and that gap in a very positive way. So think about what happens when you're following a solid training program and you're tracking your lifts, your PRs, your sets and reps, your exercises, your loads, and you're seeing progress over time. You hit some new PRs on the big lifts, small lifts, whatever, and you notice changes in your body, maybe your arms felt your sleeves a little, you get a little tone or cut or built or whatever the word is. You're feeling more competent, competent, uh competent and confident, but also capable now. It builds, it builds lots of confidence in your skills. And that feeling, that feeling becomes its own reward. I've talked about on this show, you know, folks who come into physique university or clients of mine who all they want to do is lose weight initially, but there's something inside them that says, no, I really want to look better, feel better, show up for my kids, you know, show up for myself, really, and live a long, healthy life. And we switch to focus from focusing on weight to focusing on lifting and performance and recovery and progress, and that becomes extremely rewarding. It starts to compete with food for that reward space in your brain. And that is a thing that exists called reward substitution. So remember that phrase: reward substitution. You're not fighting cravings, you're giving your brain a different source of satisfaction, right? You're swapping it out. So you don't have to, you know, you don't have to get through that friction uh with willpower, right? You can swap it out and actually seek out the reward now. And there's an identity piece here. When you see yourself as a lifter, someone who trains, you know, three days a week, four days a week, whatever it is, someone who builds strength and muscle, your food choices will line up with that. They're gonna start to line up with that. Maybe not on day one, but you're gonna be constantly trying to solve that problem for yourself in a good positive way. Like you want to solve it. It's not that somebody's forcing you to do it or you're trying to diet or lose weight. You know, you're not just trying to eat less either. Oftentimes you have to eat more. You're someone who's building a physique. And that mindset often protects you from crash dieting because you know it'll hurt your training. You know that it makes you value protein because you want to recover and it makes a calorie deficit, if you decide to do that, feel like it has a purpose. And it can be, it can be short term or it can be a little longer. But the point is it has a purpose. It's not just punishing yourself or thinking I have to lose weight. It's like, no, I want to reveal this muscle. And that's the narrative I see with folks, you know, for example, who recently came into our program from the uh get lean in 45 days workshop, who said, you know, I want to reveal the muscle I've built. And if you haven't done it yet, that's fine. Build the muscle and then you can reveal it. But compare that to the cardio for fat loss, eating less for fat loss, eat less, move more mindset, you know, running to burn off what you ate. You feel like you're doing it because you have to. And then food is an enemy, right? Food is a bad, and you call yourself bad. And I didn't do good, and you know, I made bad choices. When I hear that language, I know you're in that mental state, and we can get you out of that. When you're lifting, food becomes fuel. Eating supports what you're trying to do. It doesn't work against it, it supports it. You know, you're seeking out the fuel, but you can still enjoy the food too. And this is very psychological, I get it, but it's it's so important. People who build their fat loss phase around strength training, which by definition you have to do, or else you're gonna lose muscle anyway. They stick with it longer. They stay more consistent, they don't spiral as hard when something goes off. They're like, no, I'm gonna pick myself up and go the next day. That relationship with food and exercise works together. So I hope that's a place you want to be. All right, that's so that's the that's the brain stuff. I want to get a little more practical now. How do you set up your training to get these benefits for your appetite? Okay, it's because you might be thinking, okay, well, I already lift weights, so am I good? Well, there's there's a a way to optimize it. Let's put it that way. So let's talk like a template here. I I know some of you like systems and templates. If you want appetite control plus fat loss while keeping muscle, we know that strength training is the foundation. Walking is very important as well. Other forms of cardio are optional and the dose matters. So here's what like an appetite-friendly lifting week might look like. I would say three to four days a week, probably not five or six, because that's where you could jump into the, you know, too much fatigue and too much volume, which can drive compensation. The exception is if you are really intentional about keeping those sessions very short, if you are doing five or six days a week, in which case, for some of you, that might actually work better. Mostly compound movements, okay? So the big lifts, squats, deadlifts, presses, rows, pull-ups, they hit multiple muscle groups, create the metabolic stress, build the most, you know, muscle per hour invested, are probably gonna have the best impact on your appetite because it's kind of like low and slow, and you're not doing all of this volume and all these different exercises, you're very efficient with your time, et cetera. Moderate volume. So this is like 10 to 15 hard sets per muscle group per week for most people, which is honestly where you generally want to be anyway. Now, if you go less than that, it's probably gonna help hunger even more, but it may not be enough volume for you. If you're in a severe fat loss phase or severe deficit, I should say, you may find you need to do fewer sets, but keep the intensity high, right? Keep the intensity high. You want to get challenged, but you don't want to destroy yourself because recovery is important here. If you're not, if you're not recovered enough, just think of this. If you're not recovered enough, that also makes you hungry because your body is seeking those resources. And then of course, you still want isolation work in there if you're working on hypertrophy, if you're trying to, you know, work on your physique. But of course, if you're in fat loss, you're you're you're mainly maintaining your muscle mass, you're not really building it. So it depends on if you're in a deficit or not. And that would be, you know, whatever supports your joints and the aesthetics that you care about to support those compound lifts. So all the variations, all the isolation work, all the cable work, machine work, stuff like that. And, you know, that's basically it. You know, we we we talked about sleep and stress on a recent episode. You can go visit that because that's a whole other pillar that exists that affects appetite. But today we're talking about the training side. And I think if if you simplify it to just what I talked about, I think it becomes more sustainable. You can focus on progress and it creates the hormones and also the behavioral environment that helps with appetite control. And you can measure your biofeedback and say, is this working for me? Now, if you want to include cardio, that's fine. Here are some quick rules I have related to appetite and cardio. I would say two to three sessions per week maximum. Okay. And keep the, keep it if you if you like zones, I would keep it, you know, upper zone one or lower zone two, that easy conversational pace at most to kind of build that extra little bit of cardiovascular fitness that you're going for potentially, and also maybe burn a few more calories, sure. And 20 to 30 minutes maximum. Don't make these like hours-long sessions. So two to three days a week, maybe 20 to 30 minutes. Avoid these long sessions because that will tend to trigger that compensation and the hunger. And you know, sprinting is a whole different beast that I love. You know, one or two sprints a week. And we're talking my specific protocol, which we can make available to you, and we had a previous episode on that. But sprinting can be great because it's really not going to make you hungry at all, most likely. And fuel your cardio days appropriately. So think of deliberate cardio sessions as a form of training where you have, you know, protein and carbs around your training, especially carbs. Not training fasted if it makes you really hungry afterward. Obviously, there's a compensation mechanism there as well, potentially. And the point is, cardio is not bad. It has benefits for cardiovascular health, for mental health, for recovery if you enjoy doing it, but it's obviously not the primary fat loss tool. That is your deficit. And then strength training is really important here for holding muscle and also it can help with appetite. Okay, so if you're doing a lot of cardio and you're like, I'm always hungry and I'm not losing fat, that could be your answer. I would get rid of most of that cardio, just do training and walking and see what happens. So I want to clear up a few myths before we wrap up. I have three myths that I come up with that I think are important and I hear all the time. Myth number one is that cardio burns fat. And we kind of address this. A lot of you are like, yeah, I know that. But the reality is the fat loss, the release of energy from your fat cells is purely become of because of a calorie deficit. That's it. It's not any specific exercise. If cardio adds some calories to your metabolism, then it's part of the equation, but it still has to do with being in that deficit. And the training, the strength training determines whether you lose fat or you lose some fat and muscle. We don't want to lose muscle, right? Training is what protects your muscle math, your metabolic rate, all of that. And then cardio can contribute to the deficit, maybe by keeping your expenditure a little bit higher. But if the trade-off is you're a lot hungrier, more fatigued, not as recovered, that could be like taking two steps forward and like one and a half steps back or even three steps back, depending on how much you're doing. Myth number two is that, well, lifting doesn't burn many calories, so it's not really contributing to fat loss. But the reality is it's not about how many calories you burn, it's all the downstream effects where muscle mass, you know, raises your resting metabolism long term. Appetite suppression that we talked about in this episode will make your deficit easier, protecting your meat because now you might move more generally throughout the day with low grade movement because you're not compensating for it. And then being able to adhere to this and stay consistent, right? So we have to think the long game and think the whole equation here. And then myth number three is that you know, appetite really comes down to how well you can handle hunger and how well you can push through it. Appetite's way more complicated than that. It's it's got a bunch of inputs, right? Your hormones, brain, your brain-related genes, let's be honest, everybody's got different levels of appetite. Your gut signals, your sleep, your stress, your training, your protein, the food volume is important, behavioral patterns. So willpower is a tiny, tiny piece of that big pie. And it's not the one that you want to have to rely on. So why don't we focus on the other inputs? How do we improve those, which are gonna far outpace the willpower piece, right? So the if you're white knuckling through your diet, something has to change. The system isn't set up to support you. And it could be just a matter of food volume. It could be a matter of the deficits too aggressive. There's some answer there for you, okay? All right, let's bring this home. Fat loss isn't punishing yourself in a submission. It's really revealing the muscle you have in a targeted way. And strength training is one of the best tools in that toolbox versus anything else that I know of. All right. It's also massively helpful for appetite because of the way it shifts your hormones, because of insulin sensitivity, how it protects your meat, but also mentally, how it how you think about yourself. You're doing hard things and you're building and you're working towards something in a positive way, and then your food supports that, right? So this is episode seven of the eight. When you combine this episode, the training, with the nutrition cuff stuff we covered previously, like protein, fiber, meal timing, energy density tools like Calicurb and others that might be helpful. You end up with the system to have hunger work support you. And we're just trying to chip away at that and use that engineering mindset to make the behavior you want the actual easier path of least resistance, if that makes sense. All right, remember I promised you a specific timing trick that uses post-workout appetite suppression to eliminate overeating. That's coming up right after this. Hey, this is Philip. And a quick reminder about today's sponsor, Calocurb. If hunger has been the hardest part of your fat loss phase, even when everything else is dialed in, check out Callocurb. It's a natural GLP1 activating supplement with clinical data showing 40% fewer cravings and 30% less hunger within one hour, leading to 18% fewer calories, so you can stick to your fat loss plan. Go to witsandweights.com slash calocurb for 10% off your first order. Link is in the show notes. That's witsandweights.com slash callocurb. All right, you made it to the end, and here is the bonus I promise. We talked about how strength training creates a window of appetite suppression. It's usually one to two hours after a heart session where your hunger hormones are blunted and your satiety signals are increased. And here is how you can use that. I want you to train before the meal you most often overeat at. Okay? Now I know this could be a change in your schedule. If you train in the morning, but the meal you most often eat at is dinner. And that is the case for a lot of people, where the portions get out of control, where stacking continues after the meal, where the day's stress catches up, food becomes that release valve. Try scheduling your training late afternoon or early evening. Now, this goes contrary to some advice that I give, probably the majority of the time, for many people to shift their training to the morning to try to help out with their stress and their appetite and their consistency. So take it with a grain of salt because this is specific to out-of-control over consumption in the evening. And it's an experiment. All right. It's an experiment to go ahead and train late afternoon or early evening, not too late, you know, lift hard, then come home, eat dinner during that one to two hour window afterward. And you're, you might find that you naturally eat less, that the meal feels more satisfying with a smaller portion just because you're you got that blunted appetite, right? You just I can't eat that much. I'm not like ravenous like I would have been otherwise. Now, if dinner isn't your problem, maybe it's late afternoon snacking, try mid-afternoon training session, finish around like, you know, 2 p.m., 3 p.m., whatever makes sense, to carry you, carry you through that danger zone, so to speak. And just try a schedule change in your training. Some of you may need to do the opposite. Move it to the morning and then have a decent size post-workout. But some of you need the opposite. You need a nice big meal in the morning. That'll set you up for better hunger signals throughout the day. Then you train later in the afternoon. At the end of the day, you have to find the thing that works for you. But I wanted to mention this as an option. All right, until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember that that very lifting could be the key to helping with your appetite. I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.
